A01=Elizabeth Wayland Barber
A01=Paul T. Barber
Adrienne Mayor
Amirani
Analogy
Archaeology
Astronomy
Author_Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Author_Paul T. Barber
Bronze Age
C. Scott Littleton
Category=JBGB
Cattle mutilation
Chrysaor
Cognition
Conflation
Crater lake
Deity
Egyptians
Enkidu
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epithet
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Et cetera
Explanation
Fertility
Fireplace
Flood myth
Geologist
Greek mythology
Hellen
Hesiod
Hittites
Humbaba
Literacy
Literature
Medusa's Head
Mount Mazama
Narrative
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Neolithic
Northern Hemisphere
Observatory
Otherworld
Phenomenon
Poetry
Principle
Ptah
Regin
Royal Ontario Museum
San Diego Museum of Art
Scientist
Sophocles
Technology
The Other Hand
The Persians
Theogony
Tinamou
Tomb
Trickster
Tropics
Tsunami
Types of volcanic eruptions
Typhon
Ullikummi
University of California Press
Unstated assumption
Uranus (mythology)
Urban legend
Vatican Museums
Volcanism
Vowel
Warfare
Winter solstice
Writing
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Product details
- ISBN 9780691127743
- Weight: 425g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 25 Sep 2006
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Why were Prometheus and Loki envisioned as chained to rocks? What was the Golden Calf? Why are mirrors believed to carry bad luck? How could anyone think that mortals like Perseus, Beowulf, and St. George actually fought dragons, since dragons don't exist? Strange though they sound, however, these "myths" did not begin as fiction. This absorbing book shows that myths originally transmitted real information about real events and observations, preserving the information sometimes for millennia within nonliterate societies. Geologists' interpretations of how a volcanic cataclysm long ago created Oregon's Crater Lake, for example, is echoed point for point in the local myth of its origin. The Klamath tribe saw it happen and passed down the story--for nearly 8,000 years. We, however, have been literate so long that we've forgotten how myths encode reality. Recent studies of how our brains work, applied to a wide range of data from the Pacific Northwest to ancient Egypt to modern stories reported in newspapers, have helped the Barbers deduce the characteristic principles by which such tales both develop and degrade through time.
Myth is in fact a quite reasonable way to convey important messages orally over many generations--although reasoning back to the original events is possible only under rather specific conditions. Our oldest written records date to 5,200 years ago, but we have been speaking and mythmaking for perhaps 100,000. This groundbreaking book points the way to restoring some of that lost history and teaching us about human storytelling.
Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Professor of Linguistics and Archaeology at Occidental College, is the author of "The Mummies of Urumchi" (W. W. Norton), "Women's Work" (W. W. Norton), and "Prehistoric Textiles" (Princeton). Paul T. Barber, a research associate with the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the author of "Vampires, Burial, and Death" (Yale).
